Defensive Effort Quotes

If you commit to the defensive end of the floor, you're going to have a chance to win every night. And if you're a great defensive team, you're going to go to the playoffs.

I just play hard on the defensive end. For me, being a good defender is someone who plays very hard on defense and just tries hard.

Defending is easy. You just have to want to defend. It's not like defending is hard. It's just, like, more of an attitude.

We got to stop people. We go ahead and we score 100 points every night, but we give up more. Our whole thing was, we know we can score, and we have to start having some kind of fun on the defensive end. Everybody want to play offense. Not too many people want to play defense. Defense is ego, pride, and that's the way we've been coming out, just taking the challenge. Man-on-man first, and having each other's back when a guy gets beat.

When you're 2-0 up and you lose possession, you sprint back. So much of it is down to confidence - it's really down to really wanting to make that run.

I can speak volumes about the guy sitting next to me. You look at his stat line tonight, he had a lot of foul trouble and didn't really get going, but when he was in there, he was defending. He was playing physical, and he was doing everything he could to help us win.

When you've got so many guys that can score the ball, you really don't want to get down and defend. You really don't want to get down and dive for balls. You really don't want to fight through screens every play.

I really wanted to step up my defense night in, night out. So that's my mindset, just playing defense and trying to be consistent with that.

You don't contest shots without expending energy. You don't get deflections - unless you walk into one every now and then - without expending energy. These are the things in basketball you have to really want to do.